en.Wedoany.com Reported - The Gateway Development Commission (GDC) has approved a change order worth $88 million for contractor Weeks Marine to remove approximately 500 underwater timber piles in the Hudson Tunnel Project between New York and New Jersey.
Jim Starace, GDC's Director of Project Delivery, stated at the agency's board meeting on July 8 that the change work is expected to begin later this year and be completed before the planned Hudson River tunnel boring in 2028. According to the GDC, removing the remaining piles at Pier 68 and carrying out ground stabilization work will significantly reduce the risk of obstacles for the tunnel boring machine in that area.
GDC CEO Tom Prendergast said at the meeting that the change order, attached to the "Hudson River Ground Stabilization" portion of the Hudson Tunnel Project, aims to proactively address factors that could negatively impact riverbed tunnel boring. The scope of work includes first clearing obstacles along the tunnel boring machine's path, after which the construction team will mix lightweight concrete into the riverbed soil to ensure sufficient strength to support the machine's excavation.
"Large projects, especially one as massive and complex as the Hudson Tunnel Project, present new challenges every day. The GDC has successfully delivered this project to date by thinking ahead, anticipating problems, and taking proactive action," Prendergast said at the meeting. "This change order is an example. One of the core themes in my years of project management experience is identifying foreseeable risks, mitigating those risks, and taking action to ensure as much mitigation as possible is completed."
The original project scope was to prepare a specific 1,200-foot-long, 100-foot-wide section of the riverbed for tunnel boring. According to the GDC, work began in the middle of the Hudson River in 2024 and has since progressed eastward toward Manhattan. This change order extends the original work area approximately 265 feet toward Manhattan and adds additional activities to address piles left in the riverbed after the demolition of Pier 68.
Starace stated at the meeting that the project provided important lessons applied to the change order work, including the need to operate within cofferdams to withstand the strong currents of the Hudson River, the possibility that some piles may break when extracted from the riverbed, and the need to reinforce the soil around extracted piles to fill voids. After evaluating multiple options, it was concluded that adding this work to the scope of the existing Hudson River Ground Stabilization project was the most efficient and cost-effective approach.
Starace noted that Weeks Marine, a contractor based in Cranford, New Jersey—also a subsidiary of Kiewit—has already begun work on the Hudson River. The contractor possesses specialized marine construction expertise and has already removed a small number of piles in 2025 to better understand the work required to prepare this section of the riverbed for tunnel boring.
